The Electronic Frontier Foundation has accused Microsoft of disregarding user choice and privacy with Windows 10. InĀ a scathing editorial, EFF employee Amul Kalia calls on Microsoft to "come clean with its user community" over a growing number of Windows 10 privacy concerns. "Windows 10 sends an unprecedented amount of usage data back to Microsoft," explains Kalia, noting that enabling Cortana increases the amount of data passed to Microsoft. Privacy advocates have argued that Windows 10 sends back location, text input, voice input, touch input, websites you visit, and other telemetry data to Microsoft.
"While users can disable some of these settings, it is not a guarantee that your computer will stop talking to Microsoft's servers," says Kalia. "A significant issue is the telemetry data the company receives." Microsoft has previously insisted it anonymizes telemetry data, but the EFF is concerned the company hasn't explained exactly how it does this. "Microsoft also won't say how long this data is retained, instead providing only general timeframes."
While telemetry data is clearly a concern, the EFF focuses on Microsoft's confusing link between this data and security patches. "Microsoft has tried to explain this lack of choice by saying that Windows Update won't function properly on copies of the operating system with telemetry reporting turned to its lowest level," claims Kalia. "Microsoft is claiming that giving ordinary users more privacy by letting them turn telemetry reporting down to its lowest level would risk their security since they would no longer get security updates."
The story then proceeds to blast Microsoft's Windows 10 upgrade tactics, as well.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 23 2016, @04:06PM
"a usable UI (Windows 9)"
You lost me there. I had a version of Win 1.something, 2.something, and then 3.11. I thought I was really doing something great when I "upgraded" to Win 98 SE. It was really great, in comparison to the previous Windows that I had available.
But, what was so good about Win 9x in comparison to Windows XP? I don't recall anything about the UI that was superior to W2K, XP, or Win7.
More importantly, the more I learned about security, the more I detested Win 9.x, including Windows ME.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 25 2016, @08:58PM
Yep, you're lost.
He wrote: "Windows 9" meaning the version after 8.1, not "Windows 9x" which is an abbreviation that lumps Windows 95, 98 and 98 SE together.
The previous AC seems to be under the impression that after Windows 8.1, MS reverted the UI back to Windows 7 (or similar) and it was to be called Windows 9. Myself, I've not seen anything to indicate this to be true, I presume he got confused about early Windows 10 rumours.